KPSOM Spotlight

Student Volunteers Answer the Call for Wildfire Aid

As the Eaton Fire raged, members of the KPSOM community rushed to help support evacuees and others in crisis

February 18, 2025

KPSOM student Caroline Ferguson-Dryden volunteering with the Altadena Mountain Rescue Team during the Eaton Fire. (Courtesy Caroline Ferguson-Dryden)

On the evening of January 7, 2025, a wildfire broke out in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, just a few miles from the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine campus in Pasadena. Santa Ana winds exceeding 70 miles per hour spread burning embers over a wide area, and in the ensuing days the nearby town of Altadena was largely destroyed. By the time it was fully contained 24 days later, the Eaton Fire had burned over 14,000 acres, killed 17 people, and destroyed thousands of homes, schools, and commercial structures. Together with the catastrophic Palisades fire, which burned almost simultaneously on the other side of the Los Angeles basin, these events comprised what Gov. Gavin Newsom has called one of the worst disasters in California history.

Many members of the KPSOM community joined the widespread grassroots efforts to support the thousands of evacuees and others affected by the fires. They assisted humanitarian groups and nonprofit organizations in working to provide food, water, shelter, supplies, medical care, and other basic necessities for people and, in many cases, displaced pets and wildlife. In the following interview excerpts, four students who volunteered with relief agencies as the disasters unfolded share their experiences helping those in need, each in different ways. Their answers have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Elaine Liang

I volunteered at the Kaiser Permanente booth at the American Red Cross evacuation shelter in the Pasadena Convention Center.

I really wanted to help my community. I reached out to the American Red Cross to check for volunteering opportunities, anything that I can do. Since I am a medical student, I do have skills that I can put to good use during this time. The School of Medicine also reached out to everybody and asked if anybody would be willing to volunteer at the Kaiser booth within the shelter, and I immediately signed up. Because, you know, when you lose everything, there's really nothing that you can do. All your belongings are gone. Your house is gone, and all the memories associated with it. So, I wanted to find a way to give back to the community and this was the perfect way for me to do so, and I was under the supervision of the Kaiser physicians. I helped out some community members with basic check-ups, blood pressure and blood glucose levels, any concerns that they had with mental health, as well.

It was a little daunting at first. But I would say [KPSOM] really helped us a lot in this regard, especially since I'm only seven months into my training, because we do have our Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship with Family Medicine. So, I am used to going in and talking to the patient. This is literally my job with my preceptor in my clerkship; I go in and talk to the patient and get an idea of what their concerns are and kind of do physical exams to ask the pertinent kind of questions… and then I go back to my preceptor, and I present to them. [It was] the exact same flow of things at the Convention Center, which I found really cool… It wasn't as structured, I would say, as being actually at a Kaiser medical office, but it still had that same flow. I did some physical exams, and I presented to the attending [physician] at that time.

I essentially confirmed during the volunteering opportunity that I [want] this to be in my career; I want to do humanitarian work. I want to do more volunteering work, frontline work, and I want to go into surgery, so this is something that I really want to correlate… It just made me so grateful that [KPSOM’s] curriculum really helped in situations like this. I was shocked at the amount of information that I was able to understand. Even with patients, [if] I didn't really understand what was happening with their diagnosis, I was still able to have that baseline knowledge of, “OK. These are the questions that I should ask and then this is how I should present to my attending.” So, I was really grateful for just knowing that baseline; the application of what I learned was just phenomenal to me. And I'm excited to see how I will continue on learning and getting better at presenting and triaging patients on the front line.

It was an awesome experience. And it was interesting because we were also affected… We were part of that community. It wasn't just an othering of a community… I'm part of this. And I think that's why that pushed me so much.

Caroline Ferguson-Dryden

When I started med school two and a half years ago, I joined the Altadena Mountain Rescue Team. It’s a nonprofit organization through the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. We rescue people who are lost, injured, in need of help, stuck somewhere on a cliff or something like that out in the San Gabriel Mountains… Everyone on a search and rescue team in Los Angeles County is required to be an EMT and have that active certification. I used to work as an EMT, so I had my certification already when I started medical school; that's how I got interested in joining search and rescue as a volunteer opportunity, because it melded medicine and my love of the outdoors and rock climbing and all that together. And so, when the fire broke out, we got dispatched because that's our area.

Actually, Eaton Canyon's one of our most popular locations for rescues because it's a very popular hiking destination. And so, as soon as I got that dispatch on my phone I got my stuff ready to go, and since it was the Santa Ana winds, I knew it was going to be... pretty bad; not as bad as it ended up ultimately being, but I was pretty sure I was going to be out all night. I was in the middle of working on a PowerPoint presentation for school and [I] just dropped it; I [knew I would] get it done later. And so, I hopped in my car, went up to our station, which is in Altadena, where we all [changed] into our fire brush gear and [got] our assignments for the night. For the first few hours of the fire, myself and two other team members were out doing traffic control on the busy evacuation routes, which was very important because the power was out. It was very dark; the smoke was already so bad that visibility for driving was very low. So, we just were trying to direct traffic at intersections, so that we didn't have any additional injuries or crashes, and also just making sure that people were going the right way and weren't going towards the fire. That was the first few hours of the night.

Around 9 p.m., the fire had jumped into the neighborhood, into Altadena, and was burning houses. And I'm sure everyone has seen social media pictures and videos, but I think the best way I can describe it was it felt like you were standing in a snow blizzard, but instead of snow it was just embers flying by you in these wind gusts that were getting up to seventy, eighty, ninety miles an hour. It was pretty apocalyptic, pretty surreal. And as the fire was getting worse, we were called back to the station and given a different assignment. Mainly for the rest of the night we were to help evacuate residents who were not able to get out on their own. Mainly people who were elderly and didn't have help getting out, many people with disabilities who had mobility issues and didn't have the resources to evacuate, and then many people with chronic health conditions who were not able to evacuate on their own. We would get an address; we wouldn't know anything about who was at that address, we just received an address from Los Angeles County Fire telling us to go check on that house. We'd go to that house, see if anyone was inside, any signs of life. And if there were, we tried to enter the house and help whoever was inside evacuate. The first house we went to was an intergenerational family, maybe six people in this house, and the grandfather had Parkinson's with dementia, and was in a wheelchair that was too big to fit through a car door. So, our team had to unfortunately leave his wheelchair behind. [We] had to lift him into his family's car and figure out a location for them to go safely. At that point, the Pasadena Convention Center had opened for evacuees.

Another woman lived with her son in a house that looked like they were... homebodies, meaning they hadn't left their homes [in] what looked like a very long time. And this woman had a bunch of chronic heart conditions and other health issues that required her to be on an external pacemaker; she had been bed bound for almost a year and couldn't even sit up. That took a lot of coordination. And of course, they were very afraid of leaving because they hadn't left the house in so long. And this woman was in horrible pain… I actually really leaned on what I've learned at [KPSOM], just not necessarily like a medical skill, but more of like the soft art of medicine skills, to partner with her and make sure I understood why she was so afraid of leaving and work with her through that in this crazy, rushed, hectic, chaotic moment and try to understand where she was coming from so that we could make a plan for her to evacuate safely. And that was really rewarding because we got to a point where she was on board with the plan, really appreciative that we had listened to why she was upset and scared.

At KPSOM we’ve done simulation training in high-stakes scenarios where someone is crashing, and it can get pretty stressful to be in that situation, knowing you're being watched and graded. For me, the repeated practice with doing something under stressful conditions definitely helped me out there, because the whole night was a very stressful experience. And there were so many times when I genuinely feared for my own safety and my own life. I think being able to do everything you can to keep yourself safe but also pushing aside that primal fear and focusing on what you need to do, in front of you, in that moment was very necessary that night. I think repeated practice under mildly stressful conditions and simulation training really helped me to focus on what needed to be done while staying as safe as I could.

Kavenpreet Bal

I began volunteering in early January, shortly after the fires had started, when evacuation orders were in place, and communities were in distress. I joined Khalsa Aid, an international non-profit that mobilizes volunteers to provide humanitarian aid in times of crisis.

Fortunately, I was not personally affected, but many of my close friends in Altadena either lost their homes or were displaced, which was heartbreaking to witness. Recognizing my own privilege, I felt a deep responsibility to give back in a meaningful way. I volunteered at the Gurudwara, a Sikh temple, where I helped prepare meals that were delivered to shelters and evacuation centers across the Los Angeles area.

Khalsa Aid is founded on the principle of seva, a Sikh concept meaning "selfless service." Growing up immersed in Sikh culture and faith, seva was a cornerstone of my upbringing. I was raised in Houston, where my family actively engaged in community service. After congregation services at our local Gurudwara, we would stay behind to clean, cook, and contribute in whatever way we could. Over time, seva became a recurring theme in my life—an intrinsic value that continues to shape my actions.

This commitment to seva is also what draws me closer to medicine. The ability to help others is both a privilege and a gift—one I do not take for granted. Whenever I am able, I strive to support those in need in any way I can.

Khalsa Aid's slogan, "Recognize the whole human race as one" deeply resonates with me. During the relief efforts, I saw people from all walks of life—across different races, religions, and backgrounds—come together with a singular purpose: to help. At the distribution sites, our differences became irrelevant; we were simply people aiding other people. There was an undeniable beauty in that unity, though it is often in moments of catastrophe that such humanity becomes most visible. Seva embodies this essence of compassion and solidarity—something I deeply cherish.

Mariel Colella

I've been a volunteer at Pasadena Humane Society for over a year now. The main thing that I do is walk the dogs. So, as soon as [the fire] started they had a line out the door the next morning of people bringing in their animals for boarding, and a lot of injured strays coming in. I think they've seen over 800 animals in and out through that period; they're boarding a ton of animals now.

We live in Pasadena, so we weren't in an evacuation area, but as you're aware, the air quality was pretty terrible everywhere. And we have a newborn. He was three weeks old at that time and being that he couldn't wear a mask, and the air was so bad, we decided to leave for San Diego. And so, we spent about five days down there until the air quality seemed to improve … It was really hard for me because I was seeing what was going on, and all my friends there, able to go and help and volunteer. I hated having to leave but we felt that was what we had to do with a newborn. But one of the first things the Humane Society did was that they sent all their current dogs – all the dogs that were there, available for adoption – to other shelters. They actually transferred a bunch of dogs to San Diego Humane Society. So, when I was down there, one of the dogs that I had developed a relationship with, Leslie – she was our longest resident at Pasadena Humane at that time – and she was one of the dogs sent to San Diego. So, I went to San Diego Humane Society and ended up being able to take her out for a day, for a little hike. It just felt nice being able to do something at that time because I wasn't able to be here, in Pasadena, helping… So, then we came back a few days later, and ever since then I've been going to the Pasadena Humane Society to take dogs out. It looks a little different than we used to do; you used to just take out whoever you wanted and play with them and spend some time. But now, with the numbers of dogs there, and what needs to get done, we go through kennel by kennel, taking them out to give the cleaning staff a chance to clean their kennels. Most are custody dogs, who are boarding there because people have lost their homes or are now staying somewhere [where] they can't have an animal. There are also strays who came in during that time as well. So, we're helping to keep the kennels clean by taking the dogs out and giving them treats and giving them as much love as we can.

My medical background has helped in catching things with the dogs early on, like if I see ringworm or different rashes [and] bring it to the attention of the medical staff, because there's so many dogs there [and] they're not all being looked at as frequently. They all have scheduled vet checkups throughout their stay, but they're not being looked at every day. And so, I do think that I have a different perspective than a lot of the volunteers… I know it's a little bit different than what most students are probably doing, but it’s definitely been my passion for the last year, and I just think what they're doing is really important, you know, helping the animals through all this.

The KPSOM community, along with Kaiser Permanente, continues to support the ongoing recovery efforts in the aftermath of the Southern California wildfires. Get the latest information about how the organization is assisting local communities in this effort.

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